


How dare the robins sing

by middlemarch



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Angst, COVID19, Drabble, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Humor, Misunderstandings, Pandemics, Quarantine, Reading, Romance, a more sympathetic Dean, a more sympathetic Jess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23333899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The two of them, the diner, for how long? At least the coffee shipment had made it in time. What he wouldn't have given for a fifth of Jack-- or anyone else. Literally, anyone.
Relationships: Dean Forester & Jess Mariano, Dean Forester/Rory Gilmore, Luke Danes & Jess Mariano, Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35
Collections: Lock Down Fest





	1. Chapter 1

Why couldn’t it be Rory he was quarantined with? That wouldn’t have been so bad. And by not so bad, Jess meant it would have been a dream come true; they would’ve read aloud to each other, made up a stupid game with the plastic coffee stirrers. He would’ve convinced her the stockroom was romantic and spent a good hour kissing her throat, his hands in her hair, the scent of her ginger and jasmine, not vanilla. Not like every other teenage girl.

He would have taken Lorelai and her neurotic patter. Luke, sullen. Kirk. _Fucking Kirk_.

He got Dean.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m not gonna rip your head off,” Jess offered from the end of the diner he’d staked out. It was distant from the windows because as far as he was concerned, there was no more Stars Hollow, there was just Luke’s, with its behemoth of a register and the special Blue Mountain coffee beans Luke bought for Lorelai stowed away. He wished he could stow Dean away but the guy was a fucking giant. Still, he could take him. 

“I know. M’not worried about that,” Dean shrugged. “I figured you’d want your space.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I’m okay with talking.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You and Rory really like Kerouac? It’s not just an edgy pose? Because I couldn’t get into it,” Dean said, like this was a normal conversation that he and Jess would have, talking about books. And Rory. “If I want to read dark, I read Hardy—or Vonnegut,” he added, making Jess’s mouth literally drop open.

“What?”

“You thought I was some dumb jock, like Rory would ever be into someone who didn’t like to read as much as she does? Or like, 47% as much? It’s hard to keep up with her,” Dean went on, grinning, but not nastily.


	4. Chapter 4

Jess makes them burgers for dinner, Dean’s loaded with everything except tomatoes. He admits to hating them with a degree of bashfulness that doesn’t make sense. _Until_.

“Lorelai didn’t let it go for like two weeks after I mentioned it once. Which was pretty rich, because I was the one bringing salad to go with the crap take-out she’d ordered,” Dean said.

“Your mistake was hanging around that house,” Jess offered with his mouth full, manners be damned.

“Yeah. She had me change out the water cooler and pull out the fridge once.”

“And she never, ever shut up, right?”


	5. Chapter 5

“I was a dick,” Jess said from his bed. Dean was in Luke’s, with fresh sheets because Jess wasn’t actually feral. The forced sleepover seemed to be making him spill his guts. “When you were with Rory.”

“Was? Past tense seems generous,” Dean answered. He sounded closer in the near dark; there was enough light left to make out his profile, how he had one arm crooked beneath his head. 

“Fine. I’m a dick most of the time. It wasn’t personal.”

“Felt that way when you wanted my girl,” Dean said.

“The heart wants what it wants.”

“Emily Dickinson.”

“Really?”


	6. Chapter 6

Dean was perhaps not the worst person to be quarantined with. He wasn’t picky about what he ate, didn’t snore, had decent personal hygiene, and turned out to have read most of Hardy and more surprisingly, all of Eliot. Everything Kazuo Ishiguro had written. His voice wasn’t nasal (Kirk!) or throaty (Babette). He didn’t make a pass (Miss Patty) or berate him (Taylor or Luke in a bad mood.) He didn’t try to talk about Rory the whole time but it was a weird solace to know he knew how her nose wrinkled when she talked about Paris. Fucking Paris.


	7. Chapter 7

“So, you don’t entirely suck,” Dean announced over an arguably world class omelet Jess had prepared, using up all the mushrooms Luke had because they weren’t going to keep. Dean hadn’t drowned it in hot sauce either.

“Fuck me. Am I supposed to tear up now?” Jess asked. He kind of wanted to add some hot sauce to the omelet but then he’d be the hick.

“Whatever, man,” Dean said. He’d asked for whole milk, actually drank tumblers of it. Maybe that was why he was six foot a million.

“Do you miss Chicago? I miss New York,” Jess said.


	8. Chapter 8

“My parents only want to pay for community college. Or an apprenticeship,” Dean said, lightly tossing Jess the baseball they’d found on Luke’s dresser. It arced through the air between them as pretty as could be, a thought that made Jess sneer—at himself. Dean didn’t take it that way.

“Rory’s not the only one who wants to go to a real college.”

“Hey, man. At least they want to pay for something,” Jess said. “Anything.”

“They say it’s okay for a girl like Rory and she’ll get scholarships,” Dean kept throwing the ball, his big hands easy with it.


	9. Chapter 9

“I think she really loves you, Rory,” Dean said. It wasn’t like he had any excuse, because Luke didn’t keep any booze anywhere, like he didn’t trust Jess not to get trashed, conveniently forgetting how Jess was into magic tricks and reading abstruse early 20th century novels and Rory, arguably the prettiest, purest nearly seventeen year old girl in the continental US, who still considered holding hands a thing. Which, with Rory, it kind of was, because she never had sweaty hands or limp wrists. Jess had kissed her palm once and actually gotten hard.

“She loved you first, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Emily Dickinson, always my best gal.


End file.
